Excuse me, but you'll find no bigger proponent of education than myself. I actually take umbrage at the insinuation I'm anti-intellectual.

I also happen to live in NJ. One of the wealthiest states in the nation. Our teachers rank 10th in quality. You know who's first? Texas.

We also rank #39 in education efficiency. We're pretty good in Education Input/Output though.

Collectively, the public unions have bilked the NJ taxpayers for all their worth. There is literally no one to blame but the unions for our predicament. Our taxes are among the highest in the nation and we still have no money to pay the lavish benefits we've showered our public workers with. AND THEY'VE STILL DELIVERED BARELY MEDIOCRE RESULTS.

The one thing FDR was right about was that public workers' unions should not have the right to collective bargaining.

You get what you pay for. Teacher "quality" (what measurement is this?) is nice but actual results? New Jersey is damned good them. Maybe those teacher unions know some shit, cos South Carolina's are crap and we're solid number 49.

Actually Texas is the most rapidly growing economy in the United States and has been leaching jobs from California for some time now.

A bit, but the barriers to entry are a bit sharp, and the salary structure is really poor in most environments. Without getting too deep in the weeds, I make a reasonable decent salary in my present postdoc position and my main goals are to get a position in the city that my girlfriend moved to and get out of the lab. There's very few college teaching options that would give me the sort of salary I'm looking for. Faculty positions at major research schools are great for some, but they're highly competitive and I'm not trying to do research for a living after this job runs its course.

You're (Riidii) the one claiming Texas is the conservative model for success. You don't get to claim it's amazing then just blame all the problems on those terrible brown people. What I see is the conservative model for success damned near topping the nation in poverty.

You get what you pay for. Teacher "quality" (what measurement is this?) is nice but actual results? New Jersey is damned good them. Maybe those teacher unions know some shit, cos South Carolina's are crap and we're solid number 49.

I see nothing in that link besides unordered test scores. Even if we were top in the country, though, that wouldn't change the fact that we started overpaying our teachers and then took logic, reason and financial responsibility and set them on fucking fire as we began showering them with even more money.

So we came up with a crazy idea. We'd have teachers start paying 1% of their salaries into their pensions and some small percentage (I can't remember but it was something around 10%) into their health insurance (both of which were 100% subsidized prior) and agree to a pay freeze for one year. No layoffs, no slashed benefits or suspended pensions. All three unions involved threatened to strike (The teachers DID strike. Way to work for the kids, assholes.) and not a single one agreed to a pay freeze. So we now see stories spreading around the country how "one of the most crime filled states lays off cops and teachers".

So even if we're #4, I'd be happier where fucking Virginia is. Happily chugging along at #6 and NOT staring down the pit of government bankruptcy. Oh and they're Right to Work, too.

And you know what? California spent even more than us on their teachers and THEY'RE bankrupt for the same reasons we are. Why don't we ask Dacien how that's working out for their education system way down at #34.

It's a colossal problem that the Northeast has the pleasure of scoffing at.

If you're going to say liberals just can't deal with how successful Texas is, you don't get to pull this shit of blaming its woes on illegal immigrants. It's special pleading. You can't just throw out a state's weaknesses and take all its inherent strengths, unless I get to throw out any economic gains from oil and natural resources that Texas had. After all, they didn't earn those, it's something they have in the ground.

Red states are fucking terrible compared to blue states. Everyone knows this. If Texas is your success story, you don't have a success story.